From Harvard Lab to Shenzhen: Organoid+AI Biotech Secures RMB 80 Million Series A Funding

Since its establishment in late 2020, SIGNET has been committed to addressing significant unmet clinical needs in diffuse gastric cancer, liver cancer, lung cancer, and other malignant metastatic cancers, with a forward-looking "organoid + AI" drug discovery platform at its core. The company's founding team consists of senior experts from globally renowned research institutions such as Harvard University's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, MIT Broad Institute, and leading pharmaceutical companies. By establishing unique organoid disease models, the team deeply integrates the real genomic characteristics and functional biology of cancer patients, aiming to address key issues that may arise during the clinical stage in the preclinical phase, thereby systematically improving the efficiency and success rate of new drug development.

SIGNETFounder and CEOHaisheng Zhang

Dr. Haisheng ZhangPostdoctoral Fellow at the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute (DFCI) of Harvard University, Researcher at the Broad Institute of MIT, Director of the Cancer Targeted Therapy R&D Center at the Shenzhen Tsinghua University Research Institute, and Distinguished Professor at Nanfang Hospital of Southern Medical University. He is dedicated to targeted therapy and companion diagnostics for gastric cancer. As the first author, he published a paper in the top-tier journal *Cancer Discovery* (IF 39.4), where he discovered, for the first time globally, the potent target FAK for diffuse gastric cancer and elucidated the pathogenesis of this cancer. He founded Signet Therapeutics to develop SIGX1094, the world’s first targeted drug for diffuse gastric cancer and other cancer types based on this target. The drug has now entered Phase I clinical trials.In December 2020, he founded Signet Therapeutics in China, bringing the "organoid disease model" technology co-developed with his mentor Professor Adam Bass to translate top scientific research achievements into practice in China.

Based on this organoid platform, SIGNET has successfully discovered novel therapeutic targets for various cancers. Building on this, SIGNET has entered into an in-depth strategic partnership with XtalPi (2228.HK), the first company in the "AI + robotics" space, to jointly develop innovative targeted drugs.

The first pipeline of the company, SIGX1094, took less than four years from target discovery to entering Phase I clinical trials. It successively obtained the Investigational New Drug (IND) application approvals from the U.S. FDA (June 2024) and China's NMPA (September 2024), and received the FDA Orphan Drug Designation (ODD, November 2024) and Fast Track Designation (FTD, February 2025). The second pipeline, SIGX2649, is an innovative small molecule inhibitor targeting TEAD, a key transcription factor in the Hippo pathway, with the potential to treat various solid tumors such as mesothelioma, liver cancer, and lung cancer. It has currently completed preclinical development and is preparing for the simultaneous submission of IND applications to regulatory authorities in both the U.S. and China.

SIGNET’s innovative "Organoid + AI" drug discovery paradigm has gained authoritative recognition both in China and internationally. The company was not only featured on the homepage of the globally renowned biotech media Fierce Biotech as early as 2021, where it was hailed as the "next-generation cancer drug discovery paradigm," but its technological approach also strongly aligns with the 2025 U.S. FDA policy statement supporting the use of organoids and AI technologies as alternatives to traditional animal testing.

In addition, SIGNET has constructed a variety of standardized tumor organoid models based on patient genomic characteristics and gene-editing-induced carcinogenesis to achieve the feasibility of early drug development screening. For example, the company's self-developed cardiac organoid model, which features atrial and ventricular structures, significantly improves the accuracy of drug cardiotoxicity prediction to approximately 85%. The traditional gold standard for cardiotoxicity testing, "hERG," only reflects potassium ion channel function with a predictive accuracy of about 45%. To address this challenge, the SIGNET team systematically analyzed cardiotoxicity data from over 120 drugs, constructing a beating 3D cardiac organoid model in vitro. By integrating AI technology to intelligently analyze the beating images of the organoids, they increased the accuracy of cardiotoxicity prediction to approximately 85%, providing a more reliable and physiologically relevant solution for preclinical drug safety evaluation. Currently, Signet Therapeutics is the only corporate entity participating in the formulation of organoid standards by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA) and the National Institutes for Food and Drug Control (NIFDC), continuously promoting industry standards.